


The Nighthunger

by Saucery



Series: Spideypool Stories [8]
Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Amorality, Angst and Humor, As In Wade Punishing The Bad Guys, Assassins & Hitmen, Bad Puns, Banter, Beating, Both Peter And Wade Are Darker Versions Of Themselves, Brutality, Canon-Typical Violence, Companionable Snark, Consent Issues, Crimes & Criminals, Dark Character, Dark Comedy, Detectives, Drama, Even The Humor Is Dark, Falling In Love, First Meetings, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Jokes, Loyalty, M/M, Moral Dilemmas, Nerdy Hooker, Not With Wade And Peter, Peter Is A Tough Little Cookie, Police, Poor Peter, Possessive Behavior, Promises, Protective Stalking, Protectiveness, Punishment, Rescue, Romance, Sassy Peter, Secrets, Serial Killers, Sex Work, Stalking, The Darkest Spideypool Story I’ve Ever Written, Trauma, Trust Issues, Trust Kink, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Wade Just Wants A Bite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-01 23:41:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10203485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/pseuds/Saucery
Summary: Peter is a hooker who’s having a rough night. First, a client tries to beat him up. Then, he runs into an assassin, a strangely gentlemanly assassin who helps him out by beating up the guy that was trying to beatPeterup.Okay. That’s… bizarre, even for Peter’s line of work, but it isn’t all bad.But when Peter’s most dangerous clients—the bashers, the rapists, the roofiers—start turning up dead, Peter has to ask himself whether the assassin he’d met that one time has become his ultra-violent guardian angel.Now, Peter has to decide whether to lie to the only cop he likes, Detective Gwen Stacy, about the serial killer apparently roaming the streets and targeting the men who’re cruel to Peter, or to tell the truth and be an ungrateful little snitch.Zero guesses as to what Peter decides.





	

* * *

 

Peter stood in the pool of light under his usual lamppost, its yellowish glow flickering with the passage of moth-wings. It haloed him, but he was no angel; his kohl-rimmed eyes were heavy-lidded and sly. An open invitation. He himself was a flame, Peter supposed, and attracting moths was his profession.

As a professional, he had to dress for the job. Currently, he was clad in a mesh shirt that didn’t warm him on a cool night like this, but that was all right, because the cold made his nipples harden visibly between the gaps in the mesh, and that was enough of a facsimile of arousal for most of his johns. Peter’s ripped jeans rode low on his hips, so low that they exposed he was shaved, down there. He shaved so that the perverts who liked to imagine he was younger than he was could do so with ease.

_Ease_ , that was what it was all about. How easy Peter was. How easy it was to slip bills into his back pocket, to slip a dick into his mouth. Dressed as he was, he looked like he was gagging for cock, and the irony was, he did. Gag, that is. He gagged because he couldn’t stand the taste, the smell. He gagged because he hadn’t perfected the art of deep-throating. Sometimes, he gagged because they wanted him to, because they got off on the appearance of forcing him. Except for when they were actually forcing him. Then, Peter gagged for free.

The hours melted into each other, a fever-dream of fists in his hair and fat, ringed fingers grabbing his ass. Each time, Peter pulled up his pants and went back to work, back to his lamppost, turning to hide whichever side of him was sporting the most unflattering bruises.

In the quiet spells between tricks, Peter entertained himself by psychoanalyzing his clients based on the books he read in the State Library. This client had an incestuous longing for his son that he sublimated by hiring barely legal hookers and making them call him “Dad” (not “Daddy,” which was a crucial distinction); that one had authority issues with his nasty boss that he took out on prostitutes by declaring his own authority over them; and that married gent with the leather briefcase hated women and thus feminized Peter with objectifying, misogynistic terms like “pussy” and “bitch.”

Hey, it kept Peter’s mind busy. And Peter’s was a mind that yearned to be kept busy, especially now that he couldn’t afford the education he’d always dreamed of having.

Besides, learning how to classify potential predators would only help him. If he could predict from afar which men would be prone to brutality, he could at least do his best to stay away from them.

Today, however, Peter’s skills as a psychological profiler failed him. A regular who Peter had reckoned was harmless turned cruel, turned vicious, brow furrowed like a bulldog’s and teeth bared in a snarl.

_Bad day?_ Peter would have asked sarcastically, except that the john was hauling Peter up from his knees—the blowjob only partway through—to slap Peter in the face. Again. And again.

Ouch. Peter’s lip split, welling up with blood, but slapping wouldn’t do any lasting damage. Rather than resisting and inciting further violence, he’d bear with it until it was over.

Except that it wasn’t over. The john’s hand folded into a fist and struck Peter in the ear, _hard_ , till Peter’s ear rang like his eardrum had been popped. Agony flashed across Peter’s skull, and he collided with the wall behind him, dizzy.

Shit. Slapping was okay, but punching was a whole ’nother ball game. Peter had to get away. Who knew what had flipped this asshole’s burger? It wasn’t worth getting killed over.

So Peter scrambled away, or attempted to, the john’s fingers catching in the holes of his mesh shirt and dragging him back. Peter wasn’t afraid, though. He didn’t have that luxury. All his consciousness could manage was a frenzied stream of _move move move_ , _run run run_.

He squirmed away again, and got as far as the equally deserted neighboring alley, his lungs burning as he ran. He tripped on a raised cobblestone and crashed to the ground, terror finally blooming in him as the john caught up to him and kicked him. Right in the chest. Peter curled up in reflex.

“Ow,” said someone, oddly cheerful. “That’s gonna be sore. What’d the kid do to you, man, steal the giant stick you had up your behind?”

The beating let up. The john retreated, panting and murmuring: “Who the hell…?”

Peter groaned, ribs aching from the kick, and rolled over onto his elbows.

And stared.

There was—

Well, there was a lot of red spandex. Person-shaped red spandex. Possibly a person _in_ red spandex. The moonlight did nothing to reveal any details, but there was the gleam of two wide, white eyes watching Peter, eyes that narrowed as they swung to the john.

“I admit, it’s none of my business,” drawled the stranger, his tone simultaneously humorous and menacing. “But how old is this boy, again?”

“He’s legal,” snapped the john, which evidently was not the right answer.

“Uh-huh. Old enough to be smashed to pieces? Good to know. That means _you_ must be old enough to be smashed into a _billion_ pieces.”

Then, in a blur that Peter could scarcely process, the john had been lifted by the neck, thrown like a rag-doll onto the edge of a metal dumpster, and _pounded_ against it repeatedly, like a particularly fleshy hammer. There were squelching noises, interrupted by howling, interrupted by increasingly wet-sounding gurgles.

“Stop!” shouted Peter, because as much as he’d love to see that bastard get pulverized, the last thing he needed was to be implicated in a murder on his block. The cops had it out for him already. With the exception of Detective Stacy.

The pounding ceased, and the man in the red spandex held up the bloodied, whimpering wreck that was once Peter’s john, like a cat presenting a disemboweled rat for its owner’s inspection. “Satisfied?”

“I didn’t ask for that!”

“Aw, don’t tell me he didn’t earn it.” The man surveyed his handiwork. “His nose is just mulch, but he’ll live.”

What a relief. Not. “I’m outta here,” Peter muttered as he got up, but before he could escape, there was another blur, and the costumed menace was right in front of him. “Jesus!” Peter exclaimed in shock.

“Nah, I ain’t the son of God. The son of the Devil, maybe.”

“Are you a speedster?” Peter demanded accusingly. His heart was still thudding, rabbity-quick and weak. When he checked, he saw that his john had been discarded next to the dumpster, semi-conscious and with a banana peel on his head.

“Nope. Just really, really fast.”

Peter glowered. “That’s practically the textbook definition of a speedster.”

“Oooh, you’re snarky. But you still need bandages.”

And Peter was back to staring. “What?”

“Ban. Dages. Rectangles of sticky material that adhere to injured skin? Here.” The man dug around in his utility belt—because yeah, now that he was close enough, Peter _could_ see the details of that wacky outfit—and retrieved a small box of bandages. Hello Kitty-themed bandages. “Use these.”

Peter accepted the box, because what else could he do? “Um, thanks,” he said, not because he was grateful but because he had to be polite to survive an encounter with this freak, this monster who was clearly more proficient at causing pain than any of Peter’s middle-aged, paunchy clientele. Plus, there was the man’s nearly mutant-level strength, given the ease with which he’d hefted all two hundred pounds of Peter’s miserable john.

“You don’t hafta be scared of me,” the madman assured him, but that assurance fell flat when Peter noticed a leg sticking out of the dumpster. The very dumpster beside which Peter’s john now slumped like a sad sack of potatoes.

It was a human leg. A dead, unmoving, freshly severed human leg. Poking out of the garbage like a Monty Python prop.

And that wasn’t all. The leg was still clad in what appeared to be half of a pair of blue trousers. The base of the leg, where the thigh should’ve joined the hip, was a gooey, gory mess. Like it had been hacked off.

Bile rose in Peter’s throat. He stumbled backward.

“Er,” said the killer. He was a _killer_. “Wait, I can explain.”

“Y-You don’t have to explain! I didn’t see anything. I swear.”

“Relax, would ya? This is my job, like tricking is your job. This is what I do.”

“You traffick in severed limbs?”

“Don’t you ever lose your sass?” the man said admiringly. “But no, I don’t do trafficking. It’s a sick business, full of pedophiles. No, I just separate folks from their body parts for paying customers. Or separate them from their lives, even, if that’s the mission. My name’s Deadpool. Get it? Dead pool?”

An assassin. Peter was the sole witness to the activities of a bonafide assassin. How was he still breathing? “So the victim that leg belongs to is alive, somewhere?”

“I highly doubt it. The rest of their body’s in that dumpster, too. You just can’t see it from this angle.” The assassin—Deadpool—beamed. “Want me to show you?”

“No!” Peter was on the verge of hyperventilating. “Thank you, but no.”

“You’re frightened of me,” Deadpool frowned. “You don’t have to be. I don’t hunt innocents. And anyway, we aren’t that different. You fuck people, I fuck people up.”

“I’m pretty sure sucking someone’s dick for money is _very different_ to eviscerating them for money. Just ask your corpses.”

“Ask my—” Deadpool doubled over and began laughing. He continued laughing for approximately eighty seconds. When he calmed down, he was wheezing, and Peter got the distinct impression that underneath the mask, there were tears of mirth in Deadpool’s eyes. “You’re hilarious.”

“Ha ha, that’s me, hilarious. I shoulda aimed for a career in standup comedy.”

Deadpool clapped in delight. “Same! I feel the same! I would’ve been a great comedian.”

“Yeah,” said Peter, and then, for no reason that he could understand, he theatrically whispered, “You would’ve killed it.”

Deadpool dissolved into outright giggles. Peter stood there awkwardly, wondering why he couldn’t stop punning around this guy. It was like a curse. Or a heretofore unknown alternative to the fight-or-flight response.

“Maybe we could do a two-man show?” Deadpool suggested, when he’d caught his breath.

Was Deadpool flirting with him? “Sorry, but I’m a one-man show,” Peter said, gesturing at his very obvious Hooker Clothes™. “Appreciate the offer, though.”

Deadpool just looked at him, for a moment, as if seeing into Peter. It was unsettling.

“Lemme do your bandages,” Deadpool said abruptly.

“No, that’s—”

Deadpool gestured at where Peter had scraped his palms upon falling. There were lots of tiny, ugly gashes, and now that Peter was aware of them, they stung. “You can’t bandage your own hands _with_ your own hands; it’s impossible. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

Confronted with irrefutable logic like that, Peter gave in and allowed Deadpool to take his hands, which Deadpool did carefully. He was so gentle that the brush of his fingertips over Peter’s torn knuckles didn’t even make Peter flinch.

Deadpool—a violent criminal who literally minced people for a living—was touching Peter like Peter was precious, like he was something to be protected. Like he was something that deserved protection.

It made Peter antsy. He didn’t want a hitman getting emotionally attached to him. Deadpool’s body was tall and warm and broad, like a shelter or a safe place, but Peter knew better. No place was safe.

The Hello Kitty bandages went on strip by strip, with meticulous precision, because Deadpool was absolutely focused on putting them on correctly. Peter was astonished that Deadpool was capable of focusing at all. 

By the end of it, Deadpool’s massive, gloved hands were cradling Peter’s.

“There,” Deadpool said, low and soft. “All finished.”

Peter just nodded. He couldn’t speak. Somehow, the careful handling had loosened some knot inside him, some vestige of composure or pride, and suddenly, he was shaking.

“Are you all right?” Deadpool asked, so kindly that it hurt.

Peter’s voice hitched. “’m fine,” he mumbled, and Deadpool ruffled his hair.

_That_ had Peter’s default indignation roaring back to life. “Hey!” Peter ducked away, irritated. “I’m not a five-year-old.”

“Says the dude wearing Hello Kitty bandages.”

“The bandages were yours!”

“ _Were_ being the operative word.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Peter almost smiled, but then he remembered that Deadpool was a paid murderer, and the twitch that had been forming at the corner of his lips became more of a pinch.

Crap. He’d have to say it, wouldn’t he? Not that Deadpool was obliged to listen, or would listen, but Peter had to try. Hopefully, he wouldn’t wind up in a dumpster as a result, dismembered and forgotten.

“Deadpool,” Peter began, and paused. Fear ate at him.

“Hm?”

“No offence, but…” Peter drew on his courage. “I don’t ever wanna see you again.”

There was a silence. Peter resisted the urge to screw his eyes shut and prepare to be hit. But it never happened. Instead of the anger Peter had expected, or the cajoling, manipulative justifications of why they ought to meet again—justifications that Peter frequently heard from his stalkers—all Peter got was acceptance. Simple, uncomplicated acceptance.

Deadpool regarded him solemnly. “Done.” He waggled his little finger. “Pinky promise?”

Feeling like an idiot, Peter tentatively tugged at Deadpool’s pinky with his own. Deadpool’s pinky was, like, twice the size of his. Peter refused to consider what that implied about the size of Deadpool’s prick. “Pinky promise. I’m holding you to it, pal.”

“Don’t worry,” Deadpool said. “I keep my promises. And don’t go jacking dicks with those hands for a while, now. The bandages’ll fall off.”

Peter spluttered. “Fuck the bandages!”

“I ain’t into bandages, unfortunately. Sassy li’l shits, though…” Deadpool winked, tipping an invisible hat and waving. “Too-da-loo!”

And then, in a whirl of red, he was gone.

 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Like my writing? Want updates and sneak previews? Follow me on [Tumblr](http://saucefactory.tumblr.com/)! I also run a blog for my [original gay fiction](http://dominiquefrost.tumblr.com/).


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